Page:A History of the University of Chicago by Thomas Wakefield Goodspeed.djvu/107

 THE BEGINNING OF THE MOVEMENT 81 report it fully accomplished We shall make no appeal at the Anni- versaries to make up a deficit. We shall be ashamed for ourselves and for the West We warn our brethren also that we shall not appeal to Mr. Rockefeller to make up any deficit. We will permit the whole enterprise to fail before we ask him to add a dollar to his splendid offer. And we appeal to our brethren everywhere to help us now, this week, at once. On May 22, ten days before the end of their year, the secretaries said in the "Notes": The work of the past week has been so full of encouragement that success is now assured We are going to succeed. Shall we have a surplus? We need, we ought to have, we must have a margin. The appeal to the churches had succeeded! At the outset it had seemed to fail. But in the outcome it had been a wonderful success. In the very last week of the campaign the Evanston church reported seven thousand five hundred dollars, and the Woodward Avenue Church of Detroit, Michigan, of which Dr. C. R. Henderson was pastor, fifteen thousand. Scores of other congregations sent in their offerings and large numbers of individual subscriptions were received. The secretaries had be- gun with asking outside aid to the amount of fifty thousand dollars. When the campaign ended it was found that nearly one hundred and sixteen thousand dollars had been subscribed out- side of Chicago. Such was the effort to enlist the co-operation of individuals and churches in places beyond the narrow limits of a single city and so unexpectedly great was the result. The secretaries sought to open a third fountain of benevolence in appealing to the business men of Chicago outside their own denomination. At the end of the first three months of their labors they discovered that they had got within sight of the end of the Baptist resources of the city. They had secured two hundred thousand dollars and they saw plainly that fifty thousand more was the utmost they could hope to find by any sort of effort continued during any number of months. With this condition confronting them, after anxious consultations, the secretaries de- termined to appeal to the denomination throughout the country and to the general business public of Chicago. The story of the appeal to the country, with its happy outcome, has been related.